In a typical client-server model, the client connects to a server, sends data, and then waits for a response or closes the connection. TCP clients are the starting point for many networked applications such as chat programs, file transfers, or web browsers. When you build a TCP client, you control how to connect, what data to send, and when to disconnect, which is fundamental to writing networked software in Python.

import socket

# Create a socket object using IPv4 and TCP
client_socket = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM)

# Define the server address and port
server_address = ('localhost', 65432)

try:
    # Connect to the server
    client_socket.connect(server_address)
    print("Connected to server at", server_address)

    # Send a message to the server
    message = "Hello, Server!"
    client_socket.sendall(message.encode('utf-8'))
    print("Message sent:", message)
finally:
    # Close the connection
    client_socket.close()
    print("Connection closed")

This client code begins by creating a socket object, specifying IPv4 (AF_INET) and TCP (SOCK_STREAM) as the connection type. The server_address variable holds the address and port of the server you want to connect to. Using the connect() method, the client attempts to establish a connection with the server. Once connected, the client prepares a message, encodes it as bytes using UTF-8, and sends it with sendall(). After sending the message, the client closes the socket with close() to end the connection. This approach ensures that your client communicates reliably with a TCP server, handles the connection lifecycle, and cleans up resources when finished.